Back in the 90s, Yamaha broke from their tradition of building Deltabox-framed sportbikes to create the TRX850. Sporting a trellis frame and the parallel-twin mill from the TDM850, the Yamaha TRX850 was made to entice sportbike riders away from the Ducati 900SS. So its design was an oddball, yet charming, mash-up of East and West—and although it wasn’t a huge seller, it was, by all accounts, a very capable machine.
London-based fabricator Seb Hipperson has been wringing the neck of this 1996-model Yamaha TRX850 for fifteen years, and has finally given it a long overdue makeover. Seb mostly works on furniture, but he’s also a motorcycle enthusiast and racer—so he makes time to wrench on bikes whenever he can.
It was the TRX850’s trellis frame that originally attracted Seb to it—that, and the fact that it was something of an obscure donor bike for a build, compared to the more popular Ducati SuperSport.…